War Plan Red (35 page)

Scott, at the periscope, monitored their progress to ensure they kept station on the Sea Eagle’s stern light. At first it proved difficult to balance speed and maneuver, to not creep in under her stern and into the heavy rudder post and massive thrashing propeller, or fall behind and shed the cover that the Sea Eagle’s mass and turbulent wake provided. Soon after they entered the chute and proceeded south, keeping station proved as easy as driving a car on a superhighway behind an eighteen wheeler.

“Kapitan, we’re approaching the first buoyage line,” the starpom announced. “Ålsgårde lies to starboard.”

“Very well.” Scott spun the scope toward land and saw the coastal town of Ålsgårde. Yards from shore he spotted the lit-up factory and parking lot, which on the chart, served as a point of reference to the buoyage line bisecting the channel, its string of flashing lights warning of dangerously shallow water.

Scott stepped back from the scope. “Starpom, you have the conn. Hold our position.”

The young officer hesitated for a moment, then did as he was ordered, proud that Scott had confidence in his abilities. “Aye, sir. I have the conn.”

“Keep a seaman’s eye open,” Scott said, “in case the Polski suddenly slows down. Don’t run up his ass.”

“Aye, Kapitan. I mean, no, Kapitan.”

Scott stepped to the navigation table and placed a tick mark beside the first buoyage line they’d passed.

Soon they would cross another line of buoys, then a cable crossing. After that, a pinched dogleg where the chute turned southeast at Kronborg Pynt. Several kilometers below Kronborg Pynt, they’d pick up Ven, an island off the coast of Sweden where the ship channel split into eastern and western halves.

Scott remembered from his earlier incursion into the Baltic Sea in the Chicago that during his transit around Ven, he’d had to dodge numerous ships as well as ferryboats and while doing so had almost run aground twice.

After crossing the second buoyage line a BP oil tanker, which the starpom estimated to be over 250,000

deadweight tons, churned through the adjoining channel in the opposite direction. Her sheer bulk and massive wake affected even the giant Sea Eagle, which threw her and several smaller ships and the K-480 off course.

Alex sidled up to Scott after he finished lauding the planesmen and helmsman who had fought to keep the ship under control during the tanker’s passage.

“How long will this take?” she said.

“Not long. Nervous?”

“Very. It’s worse than the reactor SCRAM.”

“Nothing’s worse than a reactor cooling problem on a submarine. But I admit, this is hairy.”

“I’m also worried about the ELF transmissions. What if they’re trying to reach us to tell us they’ve found the K-363 and that this is all for nothing?”

“They’ve been trying to communicate with us for hours, but there’s nothing we can do until we clear The Sound and can stick up a mast. If they’ve killed the K-363, we’ll congratulate them and turn around and go home. If not, well, we’re where we need to be to do the job.”

She looked at him and for a moment he had the impression she didn’t approve of the way he’d conducted himself and the mission. But like it or not, it was the way it had to be. Later, when it was all over, there would be time to make her understand. But there was something else in her look, too, something deep and troubling.

“What is it, Alex, Botkin?”

“Yes…well, no….”

“What?”

“We need to talk. I’ve done the calculations and—”

“What calculations?”

“Radiation dispersal downwind and—”

“Kapitan!”

Scott sprang to the starpom’s side at the periscope stand.

“Kapitan, the Sea Eagle is slowing down.” The starpom turned the scope over to Scott.

Scott said, “You’ve got the conn, Starpom. Stay with it.”

“Aye, Kapitan. Helm, give me turns for eight knots. Stand by to back down emergency full on both engines.”

The K-480 slowed but maintained a safe distance from the Sea Eagle. Turbulence flowing past the submarine’s partially exposed hull and around her sail decreased, and along with it the sibilance of tumbling water.

“What’s happening?” Scott said. “Can you see anything?

Running awash in the Sea Eagle’s wake had badly degraded sonar reception. They were deaf but, with the scope up, not blind.

“A ferry is crossing ahead of the Sea Eagle…Sweden to Denmark…cutting it very close. The Sea Eagle could have run the ferry down if she hadn’t slowed.”

The starpom did a quick 360-degree sweep. When he didn’t swing back for another look at the ferry crossing to port, Scott sensed trouble.

“Something…” The starpom’s knuckles tightened on the periscope training handles. “A patrol boat…

closing from astern…. Danish, I think…..Range…under a kilometer…. Big bow wave…. He’s in a hurry…. Searchlight’s on.” He looked away from the scope to Scott. The young lieutenant’s sweaty face shimmered like polished bronze

Scott had two choices to escape detection by the Dane, and neither was good: break off from the Sea Eagle, fall back, and submerge in shallow water and risk bottoming and damaging the hull; or speed up and pull abreast of the Sea Eagle and hope that her great bulk would provide cover in which to hide.

Scott had only minutes to make a decision, but his instincts told him to wait, that the Danish patrol boat’s skipper might have something else on his mind other than a submarine trying to sneak through The Sound.

Alex’s gaze alternated between the starpom at the periscope and Scott standing in the middle of the CCP. Abakov, nodding, seemed to have grasped what Scott had intuited.

“He’s not after us, Starpom, he’s after that ferryboat for cutting ahead of the Sea Eagle. The ferry’s captain violated the rules of the road. The ferry is the burdened vessel and is forbidden to cross ahead.”

Alex looked frightened. “Jake, are you sure?”

“Starpom,” he said, “what’s that patrol boat doing now?”

The starpom had his eye to the scope. “Kapitan, you are right. He’s signaling with his searchlight. And he’s…he’s sheering to starboard…to catch up with the ferry at Helsingør.”

Scott wiped his face on a shirtsleeve. He caught the look of relief on Abakov’s face.

The K-480 exited the southbound channel at Helsingør Red and dropped from behind the Sea Eagle, which continued on her way, unaware she’d had company for the last two hours.

Still submerged, Scott began to ease the K-480 toward deeper water on the eastern side of Ven.

Surprisingly little traffic came their way and Scott let the starpom conn the boat around Ven, then farther south to Saltholm, where a tunnel under The Sound connected Malmö, Sweden, to Copenhagen, Denmark.

At Falterborev, a hook of land protruding into the Baltic from Sweden, a pair of Stockholm-class guided-missile patrol boats passed within a kilometer of the K-480 but didn’t react. A German naval oiler headed west toward Bornholm, which Scott had marked on the chart as their next objective, overtook them and steamed on by overhead.

“Once we get past Bornholm,” Scott explained to the starpom, “we’ll start our search for the K-363.”

After securing from battle stations, Scott had the messman break out tins of smoked sturgeon, black bread, and tea for the crew, followed by a small ration of vodka for each man. He toured the ship to praise the men for their performance during passage through The Sound. After conferring in the reactor control compartment with the chief engineer and main propulsion engineer on the status of the reactor and the repair to the main cooling loop, Scott headed to sick bay for a check on Botkin.

Alex caught up with him there.

“Jake, we have to talk,” she said hoarsely, looking at Botkin’s swollen profile.

“As soon as we get our communications traffic cleared up. Radioman’s working on it now.”

“Goddamnit, Jake, I said we need to talk. Now.”

“I’m listening.”

“Not here. Plus, I want Yuri to hear what I’ve got to say.”

“If it’s about”—Scott jerked his head at Botkin—“there’s nothing to say.”

She slowly turned and gave Scott a searing gaze. “It’s not about him. It’s not about us. It’s about the K-363. It’s about Zakayev and Litvanov. I told you, I’ve done some calculations.”

Another long moment passed before Scott said, “All right, get Yuri. We can talk in my stateroom.”

The room was small and they had to jockey around each other to fit inside. Scott hooked a metal chair leg with his boot and turned it around for Alex to use. He sat on his bunk while Abakov, arms folded, stood by the closed door.

“All right, I’m listening,” Scott said.

Alex put steepled hands to her mouth and took a deep breath behind them before starting.

“I don’t know if you’ll both think I’m crazy or not, but I want you to listen carefully to what I’m going to say.” She hunched her shoulders and shivered.

“The huge unanswered question that has been dogging us is what Zakayev and Litvanov are planning to do once they reach the Baltic Sea. I tried to think like they would—like any dedicated terrorist would, especially ones who had stolen a nuclear submarine. It seemed there was only one possibility: launch a cruise missile at St. Petersburg. But we know that there are no cruise missiles on board the K-363, only conventional torpedoes, which are not the kind of weapons a terrorist would use to attack Russia. So I asked myself: If Zakayev and Litvanov are not insane, what are they going to do?”

“No, they’re not crazy,” Abakov said. “They’re totally rational.”

“And unpredictable, you said,” Alex added.

“That too.”

“And that’s what influenced my thinking. In other words, I tried to think in unconventional terms about what was possible.” Alex hesitated for a moment, then continued. “We witnessed what Zakayev and Litvanov are capable of when they torpedoed that LNG tanker. It was devastating. Ships were sunk and sailors killed, and the blast probably terrified people in Scandinavia and Europe. They must have thought the world was ending. The terrorists did it just to throw the Norwegians off their trail, and their actions prove they’ll do anything to carry out their plan.”

She stopped and took another deep breath. “Stupid me, remember, I was worrying about what would happen if the K-363 was torpedoed and her reactor blew up underwater—Wait, hear me out, Jake. Two days ago Botkin prevented a disaster when he SCRAMMED the K-480’s reactor. If he hadn’t, the meltdown of the reactor core would have sent a plume of radioactivity over Scandinavia and northern Russia and, in time, around the world.

“Now imagine what would have happened if we had been in the Baltic Sea and had a reactor casualty we couldn’t fix. Imagine there had been no Botkin to drop the quench plates, that the coolant loop couldn’t be repaired, that a work-around couldn’t be rigged, that the reactor overheated and that the fuel assembly melted through the bottom of this submarine and dropped into the sea like hot coals into a glass of water. But it didn’t happen because you, Jake, and Botkin and the engineers knew how to prevent it. Now imagine a different scenario. Imagine a scenario where someone deliberately shuts off coolant to a submarine reactor or blows up its pumps and piping system so it will over heat and melt the fuel. I thought about the terrorist attacks on 9/11 in New York City and the effect a relatively isolated incident in Lower Manhattan had on the nation, and then I thought of New York Harbor, or Baltimore, or Long Beach.”

Scott looked at Alex but said nothing.

“Sabotage?” Abakov said.

Alex, fists pressed to her forehead as if in physical pain, said, “For God’s sake, don’t either of you see what I’m driving at?” She threw up her hands. “Zakayev and Litvanov don’t need any weapons aboard the K-363. The submarine itself is a weapon! Their target is St. Petersburg. And we have to warn Washington and Moscow—now!”

Her gaze bored into Scott and Abakov processing what she’d told them.

“Jesus Christ, don’t you two get it?” she said.

“Are you telling us,” Scott said as it started to dawn and his mouth went dry, “that Zakayev and Litvanov and the crew of that sub are on a suicide mission?”

“Yes, yes, yes!” Alex shot to her feet. “They’re going to blow the sub’s reactor in St. Petersburg! Drive the boat right up the Neva into the harbor! The radiation released will kill thousands of people.

Including the President of Russia and the President of the United States!”

Scott, Alex, Abakov, the starpom, and the senior watch officers huddled around a chart of the Baltic Sea on the navigation table.

“I’m no climatologist,” Alex said, “but, given the westerlies that blow over Russia from the Atlantic Ocean and North Sea, a radioactive plume released in St. Petersburg might even reach Moscow. Both cities will be uninhabitable for years.”

“We learned in school,” said the starpom, “that fifty million people live within a hundred miles of the Baltic Sea coast. It would be a disaster.”

Scott said, “As you know from experience, once a reactor is starved of coolant, it overheats very quickly. If coolant is not restored, the reactor core will melt down completely in about two hours. Set in motion, and past a certain point, there’s no way for the terrorists to stop it even if they were to change their minds. They’ll die within hours from gross radiation exposure. What is it, Yuri?”

Abakov, his bald head reflecting light from the pantograph lamp shining on the chart, said, “I agree, Zakayev will not waste time now that he is so close to his objective. But don’t forget, he can only do what Litvanov allows. In other words, Litvanov is the consummate tactician and will not do anything that will endanger the mission no matter what Zakayev wants. We saw it when he torpedoed the LNG

tanker, to get the Norwegians off his back. If we trap him, he may fight back like a cornered bear rather than hide.”

“I agree,” Scott said, “that we’re in for a fight.”

He picked up and reread Radford’s message that the persistent ELF transmissions had indicated was waiting for them on an SRO communication satellite:

SERIAL 291159SRO TANGO/ALFA

FLASH FLASH FLASH

FM SRO/LANTFLT